I set myself carefully to examine. The first nodule I laid open contained a bituminous looking mass, in which I could trace a few pointed bones and a few minute scales. The next abounded in rhomboidal and finely enamelled scales, of much larger size and more distinct character. I wrought on with the eagerness of a discoverer entering for the first time in a _terra incognita_ of wonders. Almost every fragment of clay, every splinter of sandstone, every limestone nodule, contained its organism--scales, spines, plates, bones, entire fish; but not one organism of the Lias could I find--no ammonites, no belemnites, no gryphites, no shells of any kind: the vegetable impressions were entirely different; and not a single scale, plate, or ichthyodorulite could I identify with those of the newer formation. I had got into a different world, and among the remains of a different creation; but where was its proper place in the scale? The beds of the little bay are encircled by thick accumulations of diluvium and debris, nor could I trace their relation to a single known rock. I was struck, as I well might, by the utter strangeness of the forms--the oar-like arms of the _Pterichthys_ and its tortoise-like plates--the strange, buckler-looking head of the _Coccosteus_, which, I suppose, might possibly be the back of a small tortoise, though the tubercles reminded me rather of the skin of the shark--the polished scales and plates of the _Osteolepis_--the spined and scaled fins of the _Cheiracanthus_--above all, the one-sided tail of at least eight out of the ten or twelve varieties of fossil which the deposit contained. All together excited and astonished me. But some time elapsed ere I learned to distinguish the nicer generic differences of the various organisms of the formation. I found fragments of the _Pterichthys_ on this morning; but I date its discovery, in relation to the mind of the discoverer, more than a twelvemonth later.[AI] I confounded the _Cheiracanthus_, too, with its single-spined, membranous dorsal, with _Diplacanthus_ ichthyolite, furnished with two such dorsals; and the _Diplopterus_ with the _Osteolepis_. Still, however, I saw enough to exhilarate and interest: I wrought on till the advancing tide came splashing over the nodules, and a powerful August sun had risen towards the middle sky; and were I to sum up all my happier hours, the hour would not be forgotten in which I sat down on a rounded boulder of granite, by the edge of the sea, when the last bed was covered, and spread out on the beach before me the spoils of the morning.